Technical support for personal computer systems, whether owned by a business or by an individual, is complicated by the installation of new application programs that frequently overwrite components or settings required by already-installed applications, causing the older applications to fail. Such failures can sometimes be remedied using diagnostic software that removes the newly installed application and the reinstates the original version of the components or settings. However, the user then is left without the features offered by the new application.
One solution to the problem of conflicting applications is to prohibit the user from installing new applications or new versions of installed applications into a stable operating environment, but that solution is unacceptable to most users. An alternate solution is disclosed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/418,697 titled METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR CONFIGURING A HARD DISK AND FOR PROVIDING SUPPORT FOR A COMPUTER SYSTEM filed on Oct. 15, 1999 and assigned to the same assignee as the present application. The invention in the Ser. No. 09/418,697 application partitions the hard disk on a computer with a stable operating environment into separate logical environments, one of which represents the stable operating environment and is protected from subsequent user modifications. Applications installed after the partitioning are written to one of the logical environments that permits user modifications. Only one of the environments is active on the computer at a time. Thus, when the user wants to execute an application that is resident in an inactive environment, the computer terminates the active environment and switches to the environment that contains the requested application.
Because some users may find the switch confusing, there exists a need to protect a stable operating environment from modifications while allowing the user to install and execute new applications without the necessity of switching active environments.